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Thames Festival 2012 Hello www.all-about-london.com 9th August A taste of whales, deer, pond-dippers and Silkies. Well London 2012 has certainly put the nay-sayers back in their boxes - London is delivering a great Olympic Games so far with amazing performances from the UK's, and the world's, top athletes.  We're focused ahead though to the end of the Games, when the Mayor's Thames Festival will be the book-end to an amazing summer (weather aside!) - and we hope you can join us and send the flame off to Rio in true London style... Event info after the jump. Love from the Festival team. Shishi-odori dance - UK première The first appearance in the UK of this famed traditional Japanese folk-dance – with sixteen performers each wearing 3-metre high costumes, this is bound to impress. These shishi-odori performances are danced with traditional taiko drums in a style usually seen in southern Iwate province. Song for the Thames Silkie To celebrate the 10th year of Kids’ Choir, we have commissioned award-winning folk singer-songwriter Sam Lee to write and arrange an exciting new song cycle for 2012. Song for the Thames Silkie will be performed for the first time by 600 London school children as one of the spectacular events of the 2012 Thames Festival. Night Carnival The Festival's famous illuminated Night Carnival is one of the higlights of the year - over 1500 costumed dancers from around the world wind their way through city streets in a riot of colour and noise. To give you the full flavour, check out this video from 2011. Lower Reach Sounding An extraordinary performance using ships’ horns by twice Turner Prize-nominated artist Richard Wilson RA. Performed aboard Cultureship De Walvisch (The Whale), an 1896 sailing ship, the performance involves seventeen air and mechanical horns and a chattering plumage of signal flags, as the ship sings her own sea shanty. Blue Ribbon Our acclaimed River & Environmental zone is filled with heaps of activities for kids and adults alike. With swash-buckling sailors, pond-dipping demonstrations for children to find water-based mini-beasts, hands-on willow-sculpting workshops, kayaking demonstrations and much much more, the Blue Ribbon Village is always a delight! Fireworks Finale - Sunday 10.30pm Over a ton of fireworks in choreographed, computer-linked sequences produce a blazing display of pyrotechnics and a jawdropping spectacle of exploding colour against the London skyline. Fired from two barges mid-river between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges, at 10.30pm in a spectacular end to summer 2012 and all the excitement we've seen! Unmissable.